


Elysium

by Razzaroo



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Custom Hawke (Dragon Age), M/M, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - Here Lies the Abyss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:22:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22336975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razzaroo/pseuds/Razzaroo
Summary: "Somewhere, a sparrowhawk calls, its voice beating a tattoo in the air, and Anders can only wonder what would make a day bird cry out at night." After Hawke leaves for the Inquisition, Anders is left alone.
Relationships: Anders/Male Hawke
Comments: 16
Kudos: 41





	Elysium

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, 2020. New year, new me, new picking on Hawke :)
> 
> The title refers both to the land of the blessed dead and also the fact that I listen to the Gladiator soundtrack a lot :')

_And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone_

_― **Madeline Miller** , The Song of Achilles_

**_***_ **

At the end of his first month alone, Anders sits outside the cave that’s been home since Garrett left and waits for the moon to rise. The sky is as purple as a bruise, with clouds lurking low on the horizon, and the night’s first stars are starting to appear, shy little things just daring enough to cast light. The wind catches his hair, loose now that Garrett has taken the red ribbon with him, and he tucks it behind his ears, out of his face; there’s a chill on the wind, the first sign of autumn, and he hopes that Garrett will come back before the winter comes, so they can move on before the chill settles in his bones.

He pours the last of their summer wine and leans against the stone behind him. There’s a song in the back of his head which he is steadfastly ignoring, a thread of something dark and ancient; with Garrett away and Justice hauntingly silent, he has only the night sounds to distract him when he falls into uneasy sleep. The wind makes its way through the trees and they whisper, the world speaking a language that Anders had never learnt to understand. Somewhere, a sparrowhawk calls, its voice beating a tattoo in the air, and Anders can only wonder what would make a day bird cry out at night.

“To you, hawk,” he says, lifting his chipped glass, because it’s what Garrett would have done, with that half grin and an aside glance at Anders which betrays his ultimate goal of getting Anders to crack a smile.

Among the trees, the bird calls out once again and falls silent.

* * *

Two letters come together.

He doesn’t recognise the writing on the first, tidy and set in a neat row; the letter itself is sealed, the Inquisition’s sigil pressed into the wax. Anders sets it aside in favour of the one he knew, his name in Varric’s well practiced scrawl. Varric’s writing is familiar, almost as much as an old friend as Varric himself; for the first time in all the years they’ve known each, his lines slope, his letters are uneven. It’s clear that his hand was shaking, even before he reached _in the Fade,_ before he reached _I’m sorry,_ before he reached _Hawke is_

_Hawke is—_

Anders tries to read it once, thrice, a dozen times. His brain stutters to a halt and refuses to go further. He drops the letter to the ground, among the dust. He feels like someone’s scooped out his chest and left it hollow. He wishes Garrett had never left; he wishes that finality was not something so easily summed up with words.

He does not read the other letter.

* * *

When Anders dreams, he dreams of feathers.

They fall like rain as he wanders the streets of Kirkwall, as whole and new as he’d ever known the place. He recognises Lowtown through the dream-haze that the Fade brings, and the Hanged Man beckons. Through its door, standing ajar, he can hear his old companions; there’s the lilt of Merrill’s voice and the answering roll of Sebastian, low murmur of Fenris to follow. Isabela is silhouetted in the window and the feathers gather like snowdrifts in the gutters.

He goes to push the tavern door open and the surface is tacky under his hand, like it’s been freshly painted, and he realises that it’s a shade of red it had never been in life. The feathers blow in with him and he’s greeted by people blurred at the edges, their colours washed out and smudgy. He wants to say something, to break back into their world, but finds he has no breath to speak with.

A hand touches his, warm as life, and Anders sees black hair and a half grin and eyes that are blue in some lights and grey in others. He flinches like a man burnt and back into the waking world again. The world around him is cold and he’s clutching the coat Garrett had left behind. He shifts, moves his weight off one shoulder, and presses his face into the fabric. He breathes and tries not to choke on the lump in his throat.

* * *

Eventually, Anders leaves. His feet go where they will and his heart aches, because leaving the last place he’d been with Garrett behind almost feels like he’s leaving _Garrett_ behind, though the small and practical part of him knows there’s no point in staying behind. He can’t spend his life waiting for someone who isn’t coming.

He packs up what’s left of his life, carries his memories on his back, and follows the land down to the coast. The road takes him to a harbour town where nobody knows his face, though he keeps his hood pulled up because leaving his face open is too vulnerable; he feels that he’d crack if one person’s gaze lingers too long, that he’d break open and spill out everything aching and raw and ugly on these clean streets. The Inquisitor’s letter is unopened, and it keeps the wound open, the splinter under his skin that keeps him from healing.

He buys a bag of salted liquorice with the last of his silver. It’s such a small thing to get, to waste his last money on, but it had been Garrett’s favourite; Anders had never understood but now he wants to, wants to hold on to whatever small trace of Garrett he can find in the world. The taste of salt sticks to the back of his throat and in his mind’s eye he sees Garrett smiling, laughing even, at how Fenris had screwed his face up the first time he’d tried it.

_An acquired taste,_ Garrett had said, _Like Kirkwall,_ he’d turned that smile to Anders, _Like me._

Anders makes his way to the harbour to see the ships, to watch the rock and sway of them, to hear the creak of rope and wood, the buzz and hum of the workers. He feels rain on his face, the first fine drops. Above, seabirds wheel against the grey sky and they call and call and call.

* * *

Years later, the Fade still takes the shape of the Circle tower. Anders recognises the hidden place in the Circle library, where he’d curled up with Karl all those years ago, sheltered from Templar eyes. He stands and stretches and steps out; the library is still and silent, with no sign of other mages or even Templars. Walking past the high shelves, Anders notices that none of the books are labelled, their spines untouched and unbent.

When he opens the library door, he steps out into spring. His lungs fill with the smell of new grass and flowers, the earth after rain. The village constructs itself as he walks, the wood and stone and straw thatching for the roof coming together in clustered cottages and sturdy barns. The river unravels like a ribbon and he sees Garrett on the bridge, watching the windmill turn, waiting for him.

“Lothering,” Garrett says when Anders reaches him, “You know, before my cousin came through and the darkspawn followed.” He drops a stone into the river, “Not that it was his fault.”

He looks at Anders and his eyes are bright and blue. Anders wants to go to him but he’s wary.

“Are you real?” he asks, as Garrett drops another stone into the river, watches it sink, “What is this?”

“Now you’re asking. This is the Fade; this is Lothering, or a memory of it, or a dream.” Garrett frowns, “Real, unreal, everything in between. It’s brighter than I remember.”

Hesitantly, Anders steps forward, reaches out. He traces the line of Garrett’s jaw, his thumb follows the blue curve of the tattoo on Garrett’s cheekbone. He feels real. He feels like a dream. He feels like _home._ Satisfied, Anders pulls Garrett in close and holds him, hides his face in Garrett’s shoulder.

“How are you here?” he says when he comes up for air, “You’re g—how did you find me?”

“I can’t tell you all my secrets,” Garrett says, “There was a trail of breadcrumbs; I picked a star and walked in its direction; I’ll come back when you call me.” His hold around Anders’ waist tightens, “You choose.”

“I’ve missed you,” Anders says in between Garrett’s kisses, “You’re gone and I don’t know where to go without you. I should have gone with you.” Garrett’s warm in his arms; even in the Fade, the dead would be cold, “I should never have let you go.”

The village chantry rings its bell and Lothering starts to flake, the houses turning to leaves, the trees and flowers becoming feathers. Anders clutches at Garrett as the dream dissolves around them, desperate to commit every detail to memory.

“I love you,” he says as Garrett pulls away, “I always have. I always will.”

Whatever Garrett says back is swallowed up by the Fade. Anders wakes propped against a wall, his neck stiff and aching. His memory is full of Garrett’s sad smile and if he closes his eyes, he can still feel Garrett’s solidity in his arms.

* * *

Of all the people Anders has known, he’s glad that it’s Isabela who finds him. By fate or chance or some combination of the two, she spots him on the dock, treating sailors to pay for his next meal. She approaches with the same confidence as always, as if the world lay at her feet for the taking, and pushes his hood back to see him clearly.

“I thought it was you,” she says, grinning. She cups his face, swipes her thumbs across his cheekbones, “They don’t make faces like this anymore.”

She settles herself on a stack of crates beside him and watches as he gathers up his coins, counts them out. It’s enough for something hot at least, maybe even for a bath if he settles for a meal that’s only warm.

“This is the last place I’d expect to see you,” she says, when it becomes clear he’s not about to leave. She lowers her voice, “Figured Hawke would have stashed you somewhere. Maybe underground or in a cave; he likes caves.”

Anders leans on the crate next to her and looks down into the water; he doesn’t want to meet her eyes, for fear of what she might see in his.

“He did,” he says, and Isabela turns her head to see what he’s looking at so intently.

“Did what? Leave you somewhere safe or like caves?”

“Both.”

“You know,” Isabela says, sliding off the crates to move into his line of sight, standing in his peripheral, “My crew needs a physician and you’re the best I’ve ever found.” She takes his hand in hers, “Come with me, Anders. I’ll treat you better than this place. Feed you better. There’s no Chantry on the sea.”

Anders looks at her then, “I hear there’s monsters.”

“Then we might need a Grey Warden too,” Isabela says. She taps her chin in a pantomime of thinking, “Funny. I think you were the best of those I ever found as well.”

_You’ve met Gwydion,_ he wants to say, but he knows she’s teasing. He drops his earnings into his coin purse and stashes it away in his pack, alongside the Inquisitor’s letter.

“All right, Isabela,” he says, because his choices are limited, because he feels like there’s more she wants to say unsuited to a dock in a strange town, “Show me your ship.”

* * *

In dreams, Anders lives a thousand life times. In some, he’s with Karl: they make a home out of the Circle, bending themselves around it and still manage to fit together, living their lives in the secret places behind bookshelves; they leave the Circle together and settle on the outskirts of nowhere, surrounded by a forest of thorns which keeps the world from ever touching them. In others, he’s with Gwydion Amell: they revel in their own grave, because the Deep Roads care little for restraining mages, because Grey Wardens go down fighting; they pass into modern myth together, a song of ice and fire that never ends.

But in most of them, he’s with Garrett.

The Hawke estate lives in memory, blooming with magic, their safe haven in the middle of chaos, where everything is still and they are the only ones who exist. The streets of Kirkwall rise from a green sea and he and Garrett run them, hand in hand; whenever they stop, Garrett looks at him, and his smile is electric. Once, and only once, Anders relives that last fateful evening and dreams how it could have gone differently.

“You’re thinking again,” Garrett says, and his hand is heavy in Anders’ hair, combing through, “I know this silence.”

The two of them are in a meadow, the same one Anders had taken Garrett to once his Arishok-inflicted wound had healed. The sky is impossibly blue and the sun hot, though Anders can’t feel it burning. The air is too thick with the smell of wildflowers and summer grass. It’s the small things that give dreams away.

“I could have done things so differently,” Anders says, “Maybe there’s another you, somewhere, who never had to pick up my pieces.”

“You have regrets?”

“I never brought you anything good.”

“Anders.” Garrett shifts Anders’ weight off of him and moves so he’s leaning over Anders, blocking out the sun, “You brought me so much good. I wouldn’t change a hair on you.” He strokes Anders’ cheek and he feels solid and _real_ , warmer than the sun, “Don’t lose yourself here looking for me.”

“I want to be with you,” Anders says. He tucks Garrett’s braid back behind his ear, red silk woven through his hair, “That’s all.”

Garrett’s fingers close around Anders’ wrist, squeezing over his pulse point, feeling out the beat, as if he wants to confirm to himself that it’s still going. He breathes as Anders does, and his smile is tired at the edges; Anders wishes he could pick Garrett up and carry him back to the waking world. Garrett kisses the inside of Anders’ wrist, gentle against the thin skin, before he lets go and stands.

“I’m sorry Anders,” he says, and Anders wants to shake him and tell him to stop being damn sorry. He looks as if he’s about to reach out again but, instead, he wraps his arms around his middle, as if trying to hold himself in his own skin, “You should wake up.”

He turns and storm clouds move to block the afternoon sun as he leaves, the grass bending around him. He looks back once before he lets the Fade swallow him again, leaving only feathers and flowers, feathers and flowers falling and neverending.

* * *

Isabela’s ship brings distraction. Anders wraps himself in the problems of sailors during the day, easing their aches, setting broken bones and treating illnesses he hasn’t come face to face with in a long time. When he’s alone, he busies himself with making poultices and salves, grinding herbs down for potions; he tears strips from old sheets for bandages, boils them to get them clean, and whittles splints out of driftwood. When the sun sets, he watches the coasts, watches spots of amber appearing as people light their candles and their fires. He keeps his mind off of Garrett and the empty spot at his side.

“Look there,” Isabela says, pointing, “Fade rift.”

They’re sitting side by side on the deck, under the stars, the ship anchored because Isabela wasn’t willing to risk navigating the treacherous Free Marches coast with no moon. It’s a brief moment in time, and almost certainly one that won’t be repeated, but it feels familiar, recalling nights between all of Kirkwall’s chaos. The rift she’d pointed out glitters in the dark, dripping like emerald water.

“They looked different in Blackmarsh,” Anders says, and he pulls his gaze away. Isabela leans back, putting all her weight on her hands.

“There’s nothing you haven’t seen,” she says. She pauses and Anders feels her hand against his coat, smoothing out some irritation, “I have something for you.”

She produces a book from beside her, tucked against her hip. He touches the lantern overhead, brightening the light with magic, before turning through the pages. It’s written in an old dialect but readable and clearly about the Fade.

“Where did you find this?” he asks. Isabela shrugs.

“With the Circles gone, these things turn up where you least expect them. Merrill asked me to keep an eye out.” Even in the amber light, her eyes gleam, “I’m sure she won’t mind if you read it first.”

“I…thank you,” Anders says, smoothing one hand over the cracked leather cover. He doesn’t know what Varric’s told her or how much. She rarely mentions Garrett.

“You can do more with it than I can.” Isabela stands and squeezes his shoulder, “We’ll be in Kirkwall soon.”

“For how long?”

Isabela moves away to lean on the wooden rail, watching the rift before she answers.

“For as long as we need to be.”

* * *

He doesn’t sleep the night before Kirkwall. He finds a quiet spot on the deck, away from the watchman’s eyes, and listens to the sound of the sea, watching the stars. He feels the weight of Garrett’s key on his chest, one last memento; beside that, there’s Justice’s ring, lyrium burning cold and bright. He closes his hand around the ring and thinks of the rift Isabela had pointed out, remembers that Justice had helped him and the other Wardens close the torn Veil in Blackmarsh.

He holds the ring and longs for some whisper of Justice, some stirring of his old friend; he turns the key in his hand and wishes Garrett were beside him. He wants some sign, if only to remind him that he isn’t alone, that all the pieces of his old lives aren’t scattered to the wind and sea.

But there is nothing. Justice doesn’t stir. Garrett has gone where Anders can’t follow. There is only the sea and the stars, too deep and too dark and too cold.

* * *

For once, Darktown is not the worst place to be in Kirkwall. It’s intact, for what that’s worth. The mage-templar fighting had turned away from here, repelled by Aveline’s guards, by the Coterie, by Darktown’s own audacity. Anders makes his way through the knotted tangle of its streets, blending in easily with the rest of the lost and the desperate. The streets are wet with runoff from the rest of the city, turning the ground to mud, the water itself dark with dust. He follows the threads laid by habit, seven years of roaming with Garrett imprinting the streets into the very fabric of him.

The clinic is boarded up, scrap wood nailed haphazardly over the entrance. The lanterns are dim and one of them is shattered, leaving only the old frame, stained black from oil and soot. Anders lingers only for a moment, wondering if it was the work of the guards or the residents of Darktown, blocking it off like the qunari compound had been.

He turns away and seeks out the door to the Amell cellar, feeling it out in the dark. The key clicks in the lock and he’s greeted with a rush of cold, dry air when he opens the door. He stands, dizzied, and the moment feels surreal, strange to be standing here at the doorway to his old life. Still, he steps forward and closes the door behind him, as if it can close out the world.

The cellar stairs open up into the estate’s kitchen and Anders doesn’t know what he’s expecting, what to brace for. There could be a new owner; the slavers could have made their way in; he could be walking into a looted ruin.

Instead, what he gets is a ghost house, a place seemingly frozen in time.

The kitchen has long been emptied of food, but the furniture is all still in place. There’s the tiled oven that had been Orana’s pride, and the pine table stands stalwart. The dining room looks similarly untouched; the chairs around the table stand as they’d been left and, under the layer of dust, there’s the worn carpet that Garrett had been thinking of replacing.

The curtains in the main hall hang open and dust motes sparkle in the shafts of sunlight cast over the stairs. Anders stands on the stair, thumb rubbing over the crude graffiti Isabela had left in the bannister. He half expects Garrett to come in through the front door, as he had countless times before, to materialise out of the dusty sunlight with Fenris and Sebastian on his heels. He’d lift Anders off his feet, like some ridiculous hero from Varric’s romances, and grin.

‘ _You missed out, old thing,’_ he’d say, ‘ _Don’t let me leave you behind next time.’_

In their bedroom, he finds a stack of books left on the writing desk they’d shared, Anders’ manifesto rubbing against the pages of Garrett’s journal. Anders remembers them, remembers Garrett picking them out the night before Anders had ripped the world apart, how he’d used feathers to mark places and passages in them.

‘ _For Fenris,’_ he’d said of one, slipping dark feathers between the pages, pinched from Sebastian’s fletching supply.

‘ _For you,’_ he’s said of another, taking loose feathers from Anders’ own coat, and Anders had barely paid it any mind.

He opens the book now, lets it unfold where it will. It falls open easily, clearly well read, and the pages are soft. He spots Garrett’s square handwriting in the margins, recognises this book as one of Fereldan poetry, the same sort that Garrett had quoted during those three years they’d danced around each other. All the grief that he’d buried hits him like a blow to the chest and he crumbles under it, folding down in a heap at the foot of the bed. The weight of all the ways he’s lost Garrett presses him down and his ribs creak trying to hold it all in: the way Garrett dropped kisses like rain when he came home; the way he’d always remembered how Anders took tea; the way he took up his side of the bed and always wore his shirts out in the same places and read Fereldan poetry like it was holy. The way he’d filled all the empty spaces in Anders’ heart and head and hands, like he was meant to be there, like he’d been made for them.

* * *

His quiet hours become dedicated to reading. He keeps the books that he’d carried out of the estate close, stacked beside the narrow cot he sleeps on, concrete reminders that Garrett had once been at his side, little pieces of evidence that Garrett lived and breathed and loved sandwiched between their dusty pages. He devours the book that Isabela had given him, reverting to old habits from the Circle and taking notes, working because it keeps him busy. It’s a case of untangling the dialect, picking out the relevance of Fade portals and links to the material world, unravelling the pre-Circle theories of how the Fade is never truly closed.

When he runs out of magical theory and he’s unwilling to dry his well of poetry, he finally turns to the Inquisitor’s letter. He digs his nail into the seal, cutting a line through the eye stamped into the wax; there’s two letters rolled together, one slipped inside the other and tied with red ribbon.

The Inquisitor’s handwriting is neat and careful, every letter deliberate. He apologises, like Varric had, _I’m sorry a thousand times over._ Anders’ breath tangles in his throat when he sees Garrett’s name, his fate set out in those methodical letters: he stayed behind in the Fade. He was not _killed_ in the Fade; he _stayed behind_. Garrett’s never had a fight he didn’t win.

The second letter, he treasures. It’s Garrett’s writing, last thing he penned for Anders and Anders alone. He folds it up and tucks it into the inside pocket of his coat. He replaces the leather tie holding his hair back with the ribbon. It’s not the one Garrett had given him years ago, the one he’d sent with Garrett to the Inquisition, but it feels like a promise all the same.

* * *

The Fade grows a meadow around them. It’s not the one from before but it’s still built out of memory: the shape of Lothering is in the distance and the air tastes of Amaranthine sea salt. A west wind moves and the grass ripples like a sea, whispering. Anders watches the bob of flowers, cornflowers and yarrow and crane’s-bills all moving out of time. Beside him, Garrett gathers harebells and they chime, small and sweet, not like the clamour of Chantry bells. Despite everything, Anders can’t find it in his heart to bury him.

“Anders,” Garrett says, waving a flower over Anders’ face to get his attention. Anders reaches up, takes the delicate stem between his fingers. Garrett grins, “Still here?”

“Still here,” Anders says. Garrett had said not to lose himself looking, but he spends his days searching, endlessly. In dreams, when he finds Garrett, he searches no more. He can be still.

Garrett touches the silk holding Anders’ hair back, “You found my letter?”

“I wish I could send one back. I have so much to say and no way to say it.” Anders drops the flower and reaches up to trace Garrett’s tattoo, an old habit, “Where are you, Garrett?”

Garrett looks taken aback but he gently presses his hand against Anders’ sternum, over his heart, “Right here.”

Anders pushes him back and down against the earth, against the soft grass. He leans down, presses kisses against Garrett’s mouth, down his jaw, along the line of his neck. He fumbles with the fastenings on Garrett’s coat, straightening to allow Garrett to pull his arms free of the sleeves. He cups Garrett’s jaw.

“What happened?” he asks, “Against that demon?”

Garrett leans into Anders’ touch, “What do you think happened?”

_I think you’re brave,_ Anders wants to say, _And you’ve always been brave; what nightmare could stop you?_

“I think you walked away,” he says instead, “A little scathed, maybe, but still you. Still whole.” He runs his fingers through Garrett’s hair, “I think you’re the one who’s lost.”

“You know me,” Garrett says, “Took me seven years to learn Kirkwall.”

One hand settles on the back of Anders’ neck and draws him down again, Anders closing his eyes as their foreheads meet, their noses rubbing together.

‘ _I’ll find you,’_ he thinks, feeling Garrett’s arms settle around his waist. He slides his hands under Garrett’s shirt, over warm skin, feeling out the shape of the scar the Arishok left, ‘ _I’ll find you. I’ll bring you home.’_

* * *

“You’re leaving?” Isabela leans against the mast and folds her arms, considering Anders with those sharp brown eyes, “And I was going to show you Llomerryn too, and all its nifty hideaways.” When he doesn’t answer, she joins him by the railing, looking out at the sun setting on the horizon, watching the roll of the open sea, off the coast of Rivain.

“You know, I once got it in my head to steal Hawke from Kirkwall,” she says, “When I got my ship. Pluck him out before the whole place collapsed around his ears and make a pirate out of him.” She elbows him in the ribs, “Of course, you would have come too.”

Anders snorts, “I’d make a terrible pirate. Too big a wave would knock me over.”

“Give me credit for trying,” Isabela says, “But even then, I knew I couldn’t just have one of you.”

“Credit given. And thanks.”

“So where will you go?”

“West. Border country. I don’t think people will look for me there but _I_ might just find something.”

“Hmm.” Isabela whittles a pattern into wood of the ship’s rail, an old habit, “That’s Fenris country. He haunts it like a ghost, or some kind of sinister lantern.”

Anders smiles, “I’m not sure if you’re warning me or offering a suggestion.”

The thought of Fenris had crossed his mind. He doesn’t know what Fenris knows; he doesn’t know if word about Garrett’s fate has reached him, in the far-off places he’d reached since leaving Garrett’s side. He tucks the thought away in the back of his head and hopes that, if his path crosses Fenris again, they can put aside their differences to have that last conversation.

“If you don’t find what you’re looking for,” Isabela says, bringing him back out of his thoughts, “there’s always a spot for you here. I can pick you up where I found you.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Good.” Isabela produces a compass out of her pocket and closes Anders’ hand around it, “Take this. I don’t like losing things. Or people, especially when they’re friends.”

“Won’t you need this?” Anders asks, turning the weight of it over. Isabela rolls her eyes.

“No,” she says, and takes another from the inner pocket, this one far more intricately decorated, “I always carry a spare.”

* * *

Isabela’s compass is a comforting weight in his pocket, reassuring that he can always turn back, return to her and the shelter of her ship and the turbulence of the sea. He travels light and gathers stories of a blue wraith, the ghost that lingers in the space between spaces and eats the hearts of rich men, which here can only mean slavers. Anders would know Fenris anywhere, even layered under myth and fear, and he thinks that Garrett would be proud of his old friend. He half hopes they’ll meet on the road, and his daylight hours are spent watching out of the corner of his eye for white hair and silver brands.

At night, he sits awake and sees the stars. Here, the Veil feels thin and brittle, and Anders imagines he could reach out and press against it, pictures the glass between this world and the Fade spiderwebbing beneath his palm. He practically feels Garrett beside him, the weight of Garrett’s arm on his shoulders and the anchoring grip of their hands together. There’s the echo of a laugh in his head, the memory of lips on his skin and the hearts of two star-crossed wanderers, beating in time.


End file.
